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Seismology

Talc at fault

Nature volume 448, pages 756–757 (2007)Cite this article

The behaviour of the San Andreas fault varies along its length — it slips in some places and creeps in others. The discovery of the ultrasoft mineral talc in rocks from deep inside the fault could help to explain why.

Faults are puzzling beasts. The strength of faults, the largest of which are boundaries between Earth's tectonic plates, has been mired in controversy ever since plate tectonics properly arrived on the scene in the 1960s. And no plate boundary is more puzzling than that of the world's most famous fault, California's San Andreas. Simple experiments on the mechanics of sliding rocks show that the San Andreas should be strong, resisting movement. But the lack of any clear sign along the fault of heating generated by frictional sliding, coupled with the orientation of the compressive stress driving that sliding, are indicative of a much weaker fault1,2. Furthermore, different parts of the San Andreas behave differently: whereas its northern and southern sections 'stick and slip', causing infrequent large earthquakes with little movement in-between times, the central section 'creeps' — it moves little, but often.

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Figure 1: In search of weak creep.

USGS

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Christopher Wibberley is at the Laboratoire de Géosciences Azur, Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis, France. (In October 2007 he will move to TOTAL Centre Scientifique et Technique Jean Feger, Avenue Larribau, F-64018 Pau Cedex, France.) wibbs@geoazur.unice.fr (christopher.wibberley@total.com),

    Christopher Wibberley

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Wibberley, C. Talc at fault. Nature 448, 756–757 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/448756a

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